Category: Quotes

When God finds us so puffed up that we do not feel our need for him, it is an act of kindness on his part to take us down a peg or two; it would be an act of judgment to leave us in our vaulting self-esteem.

Take note that this key has been entrusted to you by the Lord Jesus. You are, as it were, the porters of a city. Such porters are most unfaithful who permit the entrance of an approaching enemy coming to destroy the city. You would likewise be unfaithful porters if you permit those enemies to enter and to remain within, and thus destroy the congregation which puts her trust in your faithfulness.

You are the cause that the church is becoming degenerate to the core. You are responsible for all the consequences of this. As a result, God’s Name is dishonored, many people are kept from joining the church who otherwise would do so, souls are destroyed who by the use of the keys of God’s kingdom would repent, and the flouring of godliness is obstructed. You will be the cause that one member imitates the other in the commission of evil, and that the godly are oppressed and secretly must sigh over the wretched condition of the church.

Know that the Lord will bring you into judgment for all these things, and that there you will have to give an account of the manner in which you have ruled the church entrusted to you and concerning the souls over whom the Lord appointed you as an overseer. The Lord will demand blood of all those souls who will perish due to the neglect of the use of this key. Oh, what a weighty responsibility this is, and how dreadful will God’s judgment be upon all unfaithful elders! Oh, that many would never have been elders!

In this new gospel, the great “evils” to be redressed do not call for any fundamental change of direction in the human heart. Instead, the problem lies in my sense of rejection from others; in my corrosive experience of life’s vanity; in my nervous sense of self-condemnation and difference; in the imminent threat of boredom if my music is turned off; in my fussy complaints when a long, hard road lies ahead. These are today’s significant felt needs that the gospel is bent to serve. Jesus and the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained, and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches.

“False doctrine and heresy are even worse than schism. If people separate themselves from teaching which is positively false and unscriptural, they ought to be praised rather than reproved. In such cases separation is a virtue and not a sin… there is one thing which is even worse than controversy, and that is false doctrine, allowed, and permitted without protest or molestation.”

“When we discover that our idols have feet of clay our distaste for them is usually in direct proportion to our earlier devotion to them; it tends to be as wholehearted as was the pursuit and the short-lived pleasure.”

A man who claims to be righteous in Christ yet makes no effort to pursue a life of righteousness is, at best, self-deceived. Likewise, a woman who claims to love all Christians everywhere but does not love her Christian sister is likewise self-deceived. Both are hypocrites. They are nominal Christians––Christians in name only––because their profession does not translate into action or reality. They claim a positional status before the throne of God, but nothing in their lives commends the reality of that status, as if God were a fool who could be mocked (Gal. 6:7). Their faith is without works, which, James tells us, is a dead faith. It’s meaningless. It’s hot air, even if they think that they really, really mean it. The kingdom of Christ is about reality––a new reality, not the illusory old one.

So too with one who claims to belong to the church without belonging to a church. I fear that he looks very much like a nominal Christian and a hypocrite.

In our pragmatic, materialistic society, where each of us seeks comfort and “fulfillment” and respect, it is hard to follow a despised, crucified Messiah— unless we fix our eyes on the end. If we do not aim for the new heaven and the new earth, many of our values and decisions in this world will be myopic, unworthy, tarnished, fundamentally wrongheaded. To put the matter bluntly: Can biblical spirituality long survive where Christians are not oriented to the world to come?

“Cling to the truth, pure and simple – to the truth, and not to mere feelings, impressions, sentiments; to the truth, and not to tampering with falsehood; to the truth: it is heaven-born; to the truth: it is from God, and he knows best what we should believe and what do… to the truth: it is sure to bring the rich blessings of its Author.”